It was Hackathon 2018 and I was very excited to choose a hardware project and try it! So I picked Arduino, chose to build plus test a DC Door Bell using Arduino. This experience was similar to looking at a recipe book and trying out new dishes – 2 entrees, 2 mains, and 1 dessert. This blog shares my experience on my hackathon project on Arduino.

---

Prep time/Reading: 2hours
Cooking time/Building/Testing: 3hours
Ingredients: A hardware starter kit, Laptop

Method:

Prep/Read: To start off, I gathered the blogs/tickets/links/videos on Arduino by looking at the Trello board which was written by my colleague. I quickly browsed the starter kit and figured out the basic components.

I started by looking at a video on Servo motor as the video is more appealing than reading a blog! Given that I was completely new to everything, I got an introduction to the basic stuff but I lost my patience after a while. Next, I decided to read the blog by just skimming through it quickly. Images and Steps caught my attention. At the end of it, I knew I had to come back to the Components section. I wanted to know more about the components so I looked at the video and read the blog in parallel which was a big help. Next, I got the Tinkercard account setup and tried a few simple tests. I was very thrilled to see the LED glow on the screen.

In between all this, I had no clue about what Arduino is/does! So I looked up and read few pages from here. This reminded me of my engineering projects!
Now I was all set to connect the Arduino literally.

Cooking/Build/Test:
The blog is written very well, I just followed the steps and started connecting the components. The first attempt was to follow Steps 1 and 2 as given in the blog – a blinking LED. I was very happy to complete this and did a showoff to my colleagues too. So my entree was ready now !!
Next, I attempted to connect the Peizo which makes the sound. Great stuff!
These 2 simple tests gave me the confidence to try many more. I enjoyed connecting the components and finally looking at the output.

Since the entrees were done, next on the recipes was to move onto mains…..
I moved on from Step 3 to Step 6 with great ease by reading the blog and simultaneously connecting the components and the verifying the output. It was a fantastic experience to complete the switch and doorbell tests. Mains were done, moving onto desserts as I had time.

For desserts, I looked up for a few simple ones here and tried the builtin led successfully.

Overall, I had a great experience attempting an unknown area, reading about it, trying out the projects and looking at the output. Now I know what Arduino can do.